Smartphones vs. laptops: Comparing web browsing behavior and the implications for caching

Abstract

In this work we present the differences and similarities of the web browsing behavior in most common mobile platforms. We devise a novel Operating System (OS) fingerprinting methodology to distinguish different types of wireless devices (smartphone vs laptops) as well as operating system instances (iOS, Android, BlackBerry etc.). We showcase that most of the multimedia content in smartphone devices is delivered via Range-Requests, and a large portion of the video transfers are aborted. We also show that laptop devices have more intelligent browser caching capabilities. We investigate the impact of an additional browser cache, and demonstrate that a 10MB browser cache that is able to handle partial downloads in smartphones would be enough to handle the majority of the savings. Finally, we showcase that caching policies need to be amended to attain the maximum possible savings in proxy caches. Based on those optimizations the emulated proxy cache provides 10%-20% in bandwidth savings. © 2012 Authors.